How far away is the quasar 3C 273?

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six quasar host galaxies — Quasar Six quasar host galaxies, as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Shown are apparently normal, solitary galaxies (left), colliding galaxies (centre), and merging galaxies (right).

The quasar 3C 273 is located at a distance of slightly more than two billion light-years from Earth.1

This distance was determined by astronomer Maarten Schmidt in 1963, who identified that the object's emission lines exhibited a redshift of 0.158. By applying Hubble’s law to this redshift, astronomers were able to calculate the distance to this exceptionally luminous celestial body.1